by From Kennedy-Nixon to Obama-McCain Tension City: Inside the Presidential Debates
The hottest debate exchanges came during the town hall debate in Richmond, Virginia, when Bush attacked Clinton for having protested against the Vietnam War while a student in Britain. But the Major Moment at that debate turned out to be sightings of Bush looking at his wristwatch. Later, in separate interviews, Clinton and Bush reflected on that moment.
“I saw him looking at his watch,” Clinton said. “And I thought, I felt, when I saw it, that he was, you know, uncomfortable in that setting and wanted it to be over with.… But I think the reason so much was made of it is that the impression was forming that here was a very good man who was very devoted to our country but just didn’t really believe that all these domestic issues should be dominating the way they were.… If someone had caught me or Ross Perot looking at our watch—unless it had been a bad moment in the debate—it probably wouldn’t have resonated. But I think … the reason the watch thing hurt so badly was it tended to reinforce the problem he had in the election.”
“You look at your watch and they say that he shouldn’t have any business running for president,” said Bush. “He’s bored. He’s out of this thing, he’s not with it and we need change. They took a little incident like that to show that I was, you know, out of it. They made a huge thing out of that. Now, was I glad when the damn thing was over? Yeah. And maybe that’s why I was looking at it—only ten more minutes of this crap, I mean. Go ahead and use [that line]. I’m a free spirit now.”
We used it.
The wristwatch incident aside, Clinton had been the major advocate of the town hall format, and he was delighted with how it went.
“I think presidents should be accountable to citizens, and I think it’s very interesting the questions they ask and the way they ask them. Those folks who are out there trying to put lives together, and you know, pay bills, and send their kids to college, and deal with all the things that people deal with. And that’s their perspective. It’s the flesh and blood of America, so I love those things, and I loved that one. I think I did very well there.”
Bush did not have a good time at Richmond. He didn’t care much for the questions, particularly one from an audience member who challenged Bush for raising Clinton’s having demonstrated against the Vietnam War as a character issue.
“What I didn’t know is that beforehand they had rehearsed and identified some of the questioners and there was some guy that was, you know, so clearly … going to be antagonistic to me.… They singled him out to be the contentious questioner of George Bush. I mean that’s, that’s show business. Now should I have been able to react better and do a better job? I guess probably.”
The moderator, Carole Simpson of ABC, had a very different take on what happened.
She recalled her relationship with the town hall audience—from selection to post-debate—in a 1994 conversation for the Washington Press Club Foundation’s Women in Journalism oral history project.
“I said, ‘Well, this is going to be really exciting, and I want you all to be loose. We’re going to have fun. This is going to be great. We’re making history and we’re going to do it together. We’re in this together—pals, buddies.’ ”
That’s all she told the 209 Richmond-area uncommitted voters chosen to ask questions of Bush, Clinton, and Perot.
She said she was given little guidance about what each of the people might ask and, when the debate actually began, was told in her ear by Ed Fouhy, the debate executive producer, which people to call on.
Fouhy contended the selecting, done from what a pool director had put on the screen, was based solely on making sure all sections of the audience were equally represented. He vehemently denied Bush’s charge that it had to do with whether a questioner was a specific kind of voter or pro or against any particular candidate.
He also said the questioners were not rehearsed or identified before the debate.
Fouhy got the impression during the afternoon run-through that Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater realized the danger zone Bush was about to enter. But it was too late to do anything about it.
Carole Simpson’s handling of the ninety minutes became a source of debate itself. Some thought she let it get too loose, and, as is the fate of all debate moderators now, partisans accused her of favoring one candidate over another. None of it got to her. She was comfortable with the job she did.
“It became a pretty important political event in the history of this country, and certainly in that election year,” she said, “and I’m proud that I was part of it.”
And Simpson, busy moderating, quite understandably did not even see President Bush glancing at his watch until afterward on the tape.
TWO DAYS EARLIER, Hal Bruno, ABC’s political director, ran the Quayle-Gore-Stockdale event at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. The vice president, the senator, and the retired navy admiral debated in an open format that got to be a lot more open than originally intended.
Even the participants agreed afterward that it had elements of chaos—some called it an incoherent brawl.
Bruno opened the debate by explaining the groundbreaking rules: opening statements and from then on brief answers to questions, followed by five-minute discussions about each issue, with the candidates allowed to question one another directly.
Gore, standing at his podium across from Quayle with Stockdale in between, set the tone by welcoming Stockdale as a war hero and then saying to Quayle:
“And Mr. Vice President. Dan, if I may.… I’ll make you a deal this evening. If you don’t try to compare George Bush to Harry Truman, I won’t compare you to Jack Kennedy.”
That brought down the house.
Gore kept going, “Harry Truman.”
Quayle broke in:
“Do you remember the last time someone compared themselves to Jack Kennedy? Do you remember what they said?”
Gore ignored that, continuing his sentence: “Harry Truman, it’s worth remembering, assumed the presidency when Franklin Roosevelt died here in Georgia—only one of many occasions when fate thrust a vice president into the Oval Office at a time of crisis. It’s something to think about during the debate this evening.”
It wasn’t long before Stockdale, in his opening statement, uttered his Major Moment line: “Who am I? Why am I here?”
That was followed a few minutes later with this freewheeling exchange.
STOCKDALE: Okay. I thought this was just an open session, this five-minute thing. I didn’t have anything to add to his. But I will …
GORE: Well, I’ll jump in if you don’t want—
QUAYLE: I thought anyone could jump in whenever they wanted to.
BRUNO: Okay, whatever pleases you gentlemen is fine with me. You’re the candidates.
QUAYLE: But I want Admiral Stockdale’s time.
BRUNO: This is not the Senate, where you can trade off time. Go ahead, Senator Gore.
GORE: I’ll let you all figure out the rules, I’ve got some points that I want to make here and I still haven’t gotten an answer to my question on when you guys are going to start worrying about this country, but I want to elaborate on it before—
QUAYLE: Why doesn’t the Democratic Congress—why doesn’t Democratic the Congress—
BRUNO: Mr. Vice President, let him say his thoughts, and then you can come in.
GORE: I was very patient in letting you get off that string of attacks. We’ve been listening to—
QUAYLE: Good points.
GORE:—trickle-down economics for twelve years now, and you all still support trickle-down to the very last drop. And, you know, talking about this point of concentrating on every other country in the world as opposed to the people of our country right here at home …
QUAYLE: Well, we’re going to have plenty of time to talk about trickle-down government, which you’re for. But the question—
GORE: Well, I’d like to hear the answer.
QUAYLE: But the question is—the question is—and which you have failed to address, and that is, why is Bill Clinton qualif
ied to be president of the United States. You’ve talked about—
GORE: Oh, I’ll be happy to answer that question—
QUAYLE: You’ve talked about Jim Baker. You’ve talked about trickle-down economics. You’ve talked about the worst economy—
BRUNO: Now, wait a minute. The question was about—
QUAYLE: —in fifty years.
GORE: I’ll be happy to answer those. May I answer—
QUAYLE: Why is he qualified to be president of the United States?
GORE: I’ll be happy to—
QUAYLE: I want to go back and make a point—
GORE: Well, you’ve asked me the question. If you won’t answer my question I will answer yours.
QUAYLE: I have not asked you a question. I’ve made a statement, in that you have not told us why Bill Clinton is qualified to be president of the United States. I pointed out what he said about the Persian Gulf War. But let me repeat for you. Here’s what he said, Senator. You know full well what he said.
GORE: You want me to answer your question?
QUAYLE: I’m making a statement. Then you can answer it.
BRUNO: Can we give Admiral Stockdale a chance to come in, please—
There was a lot of talk at once among everyone on the stage. Then:
QUAYLE: [inaudible] Here’s what he said. I mean, this is the Persian Gulf War—the most important event in his political lifetime and here’s what Bill Clinton says. “If it’s a close vote, I’d vote with the majority.”
BRUNO: Let’s give Admiral Stockdale a chance to come in.
QUAYLE: But he was the minority. That qualifies you for being president of the United States? I hope America is listening very closely to this debate tonight.
STOCKDALE: And I think America is seeing right now the reason this nation is in gridlock.
The audience in the Atlanta hall hooted and hollered as they had many times from the beginning of the debate, including when Stockdale uttered his famous line, “Who am I? Why am I here?” Bruno had tried to keep the audience silent but to no avail.
Stockdale wasn’t laughing when I talked to him seven years later in a hotel room in Los Angeles.
“I never got back to that because there was never an opportunity for me to explain my life to people,” he said. “It was so different from Quayle and Gore.”
Stockdale was a career navy man, a fighter pilot who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965, taken prisoner, and withstood severe torture and starvation. As the senior officer, Stockdale created a prison system that allowed the captured Americans to communicate with one another. He received the Medal of Honor for his actions, rose to the rank of vice admiral, and served as president of the Naval War College.
“The four years in solitary confinement in Vietnam, seven and a half years in prisons, [dropping] the first bomb that started the … American bombing raid in … North Vietnam,” Stockdale said. “I don’t say it just to brag, but, I mean, my sensitivities are completely different.”
As Quayle and Gore went at each other, Stockdale, from another world, mostly remained a spectator. At one point, Bruno broke in to give Stockdale a chance to speak, and the admiral said, “I would like to get in. I feel like I’m an observer at a Ping-Pong game.”
Stockdale expanded on that later.
“The whole thing reminded me of a Maypole dance. I was standing there trying to figure out how I could get my oar in and never really did. And they’re just exercising right where they live every day. They’ll take an issue like Medicare, and they’ll go from this way to that, and there’s four different ways you can look at it, and they dance counterclockwise awhile. I said, what am I doing here? How can I break in and tell them … that’s not the whole story on being the national leader.”
Stockdale drew understanding and sympathy from voters who watched the debate but also criticism for a lack of knowledge of the issues.
Guilty as charged, the admiral said to me. “That’s a fair criticism, but I didn’t get much help from anybody about it.”
Then he told this story:
“Sybil [his wife] said to me … ‘Are you going to have to be in that—if they have a VP debate’—and it hadn’t been really decided yet—‘You’re not going to have to be in that, are you?’ I said, ‘No, everybody knows I’m not a politician.’… And about a week before the debate I called Ross [Perot]. I seldom called him, but in this case I said, ‘You know, I’m in luck. Nobody has ever mentioned that debate, and it’s too late to invite me, and I think that’s as it ought to be because I’m not a politician.’
“He said, ‘Oh, Jim, I forgot to tell you. Your invitation came here about three weeks ago and we accepted for you, and I forgot to tell you.’ So that was the preparation.”
There were definitely no briefing books and, more important, no pre-debate discussion with Perot.
“I never had a single conversation about politics with Ross Perot in my life; still haven’t.”
I asked Quayle if Stockdale was a distraction.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘distraction,’ but it was more difficult to continue to focus on Clinton and Gore with Admiral Stockdale there, because I didn’t want to talk about Perot. We were really just trying to forget about Ross Perot, and so therefore I would just as soon him not have been on the stage.”
On Larry King Live right after the debate, a caller asked Perot how he could defend selecting Stockdale as a running mate. Perot said, “I don’t know what your concerns are. If your concerns are that he is not a glib talker in a debate setting, then possibly that’s your concerns. I’m sure you know that he is a hero’s hero. He is a Medal of Honor winner. He is a man that nobody could break under terrible conditions. He is also a scholar. He is a brilliant man.”
Comparing him to Quayle and Gore, Perot said, “They’d have trouble getting a job in the private sector. They don’t have any experience. They’re nice guys but they—you know, you wouldn’t hire them as pilots. They don’t know how to fly. You wouldn’t hire them as businessmen.”
Hal Bruno said he went into that debate determined to make sure everyone was treated fairly but basically played the role of a “potted plant because nobody was tuning in to hear me.”
He described what happened:
“Gore and Quayle just absolutely took off on each other, Quayle was attacking Clinton through Gore. Gore picked up on it and came back savagely—really came back savagely. Quayle was the same way. Stockdale stood there and just watched.”
Hal realized that he had to do something or it would spin even further out of control. “I had to many times, just stop it and say you can’t do that. And, boy, every chance they got they just turned loose on each other.”
He thought Stockdale was out of his element.
“He was a wonderful man—just a tremendous person. He was always laughed at for saying ‘Who am I and why am I here’ when all that was was a lead-in—in his opening statement—to something that was a very sensitive and brilliant discourse on how he felt about the electoral system and so on.”
Very few listeners in the hall or anywhere else seem to have heard the rest of what James Stockdale said that night:
Who am I? Why am I here? I’m not a politician—everybody knows that. So don’t expect me to use the language of the Washington insider. Thirty-seven years in the navy, and only one of them up there in Washington. And now I’m an academic. The centerpiece of my life was the Vietnam War. I was there the day it started. I led the first bombing raid against North Vietnam. I was there the day it ended, and I was there for everything in between. Ten years in Vietnam, aerial combat, and torture. I know some things about the Vietnam War better than anybody in the world. I know some things about the Vietnam War better than anybody in the world.
And I know how governments, how American governments can be—can be courageous, and how they can be callow. And that’s important. That’s one thing I’m an insider on.
I was the leader of the underground of the American pi
lots who were shot down in prison in North Vietnam. You should know that the American character displayed in those dungeons by those fine men was a thing of beauty.
I look back on those years as the beginning of wisdom, learning everything a man can learn about the vulnerabilities and the strengths that are ours as Americans.
Why am I here tonight? I am here because I have in my brain and in my heart what it takes to lead America through tough times.
Hal Bruno recalled that at one point in the raucous debate Stockdale had trouble with his hearing aid, and he began fumbling around with it because he couldn’t hear what was being said.
“I almost blurted out to Stockdale ‘You may be the luckiest man in America.’ ”
A FURTHER FORMAT experiment was at the heart of the final 1992 presidential debate in East Lansing, Michigan. The first half of those ninety minutes had a sole moderator—me—asking questions of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot with no formal restraints on answer times or subjects. Three panelists would then revert to the traditional format in the second half.
The Quayle-Gore-Stockdale affair and the Richmond town hall excitements had focused anxious attention on everyone involved in preparing for East Lansing—me in particular.
I decided the key was the opening question for each of the candidates. I worked hard on them, based on a theme I would state as a preface to Bush, Perot, and Clinton at the beginning of the debate.
Just before leaving the East Lansing hotel for the debate, I called my wife, Kate, to run it all by her. A novelist, she was in Washington for a book event, unable to hold my hand in East Lansing. I read her my preface:
“It seems, from what some voters said at your Richmond debate, and from polling and other data, that each of you, fairly or not, faces serious voter concerns about the underlying credibility and believability of what each of you says you would do as president in the next four years.”
I then read her the three questions—one for each.